Sunday, June 21, 2009

OUR CORRESPONDENTNew Delhi, May 27: On a day the UGC announced guidelines to curb ragging, a first-year engineering student alleged that he was beaten up with hockey sticks by seniors in his hostel room. Md Wasim, a BTech student of the Dehradun Institute of Technology in Greater Noida, suffered injuries on his head and back and is in hospital.

“It was the last day of their exams and they had got drunk to celebrate. I was in my hostel room with my classmates when they came for me. They were carrying hockey sticks and they went on hitting me. I even got a friend to lock me in, but they broke open the door. They carried a list of names of juniors who had escaped ragging when the session had started and they picked on us,” Wasim said from his hospital bed.

The student, a resident of Badaun in Uttar Pradesh, said a group of 24 seniors had attacked him on Monday afternoon as he pleaded with them to let him go. His parents have filed a police complaint. The college principal, C.L. Verma, said he has set up a commission to investigate the matter and is awaiting a report.

This is not the first such incident in a Greater Noida college. In 2007, six students allegedly stripped and burnt a first-year student at the Apeejay Institute of Architecture and Planning on October 4 in the college hostel. The Uttar Pradesh government recently issued an order banning ragging.

The order, issued in March, said any student caught ragging would be immediately expelled. It also instructed educational institutes to mention the anti-ragging provisions in their prospectus and bar senior students from meeting juniors after 9pm. Any violation could result in the cancellation of their accreditation, the order said.